Category: ChemEng

“Well, yes, I have nothing else to… Umm, I have loads of other things to do, but nothing which could be done at 1am on a Sunday night…”

– Actual conversation by actual people on an actual Sunday night. Actually.

So what happened since I last posted? Hmmm nothing really… Just second year started, I signed up to way too many things, my to-do list is so long that it doesn’t fit above my desk, my diet is something like McDonalds-Subway-Dominos-BurgerKing on an infinite loop, I don’t remember the last time I had 3 proper meals in a day, my sleeping cycle is starting to vaguely resemble that of a computing student, so yeah, nothing really… But let’s start from the beginning.

I was in the middle of exams, when I got an email back in May. The subject: “Summer communications work”. It was from the ChemEng Communications Officer… Ohh well, I thought it’s like a one-day something, some promotions, whatever. Then I read the email…

“…I am looking for someone to do some part-time work on departmental communications…”

“…The work would be quite varied, essentially assisting me and would consist of things such as writing short news stories, managing social media channels and putting together the newsletter…”

“…given your great work on the blog I thought I would approach you first…”

I have never been to an Imperial Open Day before. When I was applying, I lived in Hungary, so I couldn’t just turn up on a random Wednesday at London… But yesterday, I finally attended one of these, and it was a-ma-zing. So let’s start from the beginning…

I got an email a couple of weeks ago. Perks of being a student blogger: when there is a marketing work, you’re the first to be asked 🙂 So they asked me if I liked speaking in front of a lot of people, because there will be a talk on the Open Day where they need students (i.e.

The last two was kind of ok, Thermo was a bit confusing sometimes and I couldn’t solve some bits in Process (that hydrogen recycle made me crazy…). But I survived, I am alive, and it’s done now!

The Process Analysis exam ended at 12:00 on Monday, and at 19:00 I was already at the airport heading back to Hungary to visit my old high school. (Kind of obsessed, I know…) But I can’t stay long, as I will start working next Thursday (more info later… 😀 ).

But for now, I am enjoying the holiday, complaining about the Hungarian weather and eating loads of ice-cream.

1. Mastery. They said they will email us if we failed by the end of today. And they will not email us if we passed. It’s currently 19:03 and I haven’t got any email yet. Yet. Yet. Yet.

2. Properties of Matter. I actually studied quite a lot for this one, I did all the past papers and stuff. And I always had the exact same mistake in them. And of course there was a question on this topic in the exam. And of course I keep thinking about if I wrote the correct answer or not.

Well, first of all, they’re difficult. Especially if you had no “revision strategy” at all, and you have a tendency for procrastination. Like me. They’re also difficult, because this is Imperial. And you know, it’s the best uni in the world… So let me tell you a few things about exams…

1. You can get used to sleeping on the tube. That precious 30 mins can’t be wasted, so you need to use it the best you can: put on sunglasses, sit on the end seat and relax. Don’t forget to display your ID card (or at least some Imperial badges) so people don’t think you were partying yesterday…

Let’s start from the beginning. So, we had our first exam on Friday, then the Imperial Festival happened on the weekend, and in between there was a BBQ party in Woodward as well. I could say it was a busy weekend, but that would be quite an understatement…

Friday

First exam: Mastery. This was an afternoon exam, so I woke up at 8:30 and then didn’t do anything in the morning so that I have all my brain capacity available for the exam. It started at 14:00 so I decided to leave from Woodward at 11:30 – just in case anything happens.

… where I no longer know what day it is today. I switched to a new time scale: how many days left till the next exam. It’s very effective 😀

The summer term has started but I didn’t really notice… We don’t have normal lectures, just a couple of revisions and extra tutorials. That means I don’t have to go to SouthKen at 7am, which is surprisingly good 🙂

Revision is… Well, I start to understand Thermo, which is progress, right? 😀

And of course, I couldn’t resist, so I signed up for volunteering at the Imperial Festival on the 7th May.

Revision is going well terrible ok. I still expect to fail my exams, but at least not with 0%. I made a new revision planner (because the previous one was not effective enough), this is a bit like when I download stuff and there is this progress bar and it slowly fills and… well, you get the idea. Except that this one down here, it fills VERY slowly…